The top-level National Socialist reactions, Goebbels and Himmler ordering investigations into gassing rumors, Hitler dismissing them as enemy propaganda, and the Nuremberg defendants (including Goering and others) viewing the extermination charges as Allied staging and not believing them, are significant. Himmler's private comments on "rumours disseminated around the world" and his order to investigate abuses on SS oath of honour show they were treating the claims as exaggerated or hostile disinformation, not confirmed policy. Goering explicitly said at trial he first heard about the mass extermination story at Nuremberg and didn't believe it. Multiple defendants expressed the same disbelief. Hanna Reitsch's account of Himmler flicking through a gas chamber booklet and calling it enemy propaganda that needed countering fits the same pattern.